generation limbo: 20-somethings today, debt, unemployment, the questionable value of a college education

I mean the dude is teaching at a place where only 64% of students graduate after 6 years and those who do have an average debt load of $22,219. he doesn't have to go very far time find some people who will soon be in pretty shitty employment situations. being able to write a 5 page essay on 'public choice economics' is not actually a valuable skill for the workforce.

that's true and if it were a european university it might not even be a tragic statistic, but w/ the american cost structure it is. I mean he's teaching at 'the cheap option' ~20k/y total cost - and fewer than 40% of entering students are actually earning that 80k degree in 4 years. and in the bigger picture of higher ed this still falls under 'not as bad as most places'. if he can't find a current student in a shitty economic situation he's not looking very hard. anyway he probably has weirdo libertarian kids who make 53% signs in his classes.

idk I was mostly going off my knowledge of the french public uni system where it's pretty easy to fail an entire year / drop out / take forever to graduate. seems like it's easier to justify those things when your only investment is time.

Attrition is the American way in education at all levels. The whole Rube Goldberg machine leaks at every valve. Fewer than 70 percent of high school students graduate. Just over 70 percent of those graduates will enter some form of postsecondary education. But barely more than half of those who start BA programs will finish them in six years, and only 30 percent of those who start community college will win an associate degree in three years. After that point, most people don’t manage to graduate.

one thing i can't shake when thinking about college, as a historical thing, is that the whole model of higher education, the liberal arts, whatever, wasn't to make good workers or even make more geniuses but to make gentlemen.

that an institution serves a totally different purpose than it did back in the day isn't necessarily a bad thing...you can def argue that our 'best scholars in the world' university system was a competitive advantage for our economy over most of the 20th century despite its 'make gentlemen' origins

it's maybe harder to argue that its a net plus in 2011. lotsa good comparisons w/ health care system.

they operate as businesses and it is not in their long-terml financial interest to have people drop out. it's sorta a shame public schools don't have this logic but that would require them to also turn into alumni donation-based corporations

xp to dayo - yeah, totally, ime the level of institutional support at those places is p fantastic & theres def an emphasis placed on graduating everyone (and everyone getting at least at a b). where i work now im always surprised by how little effort is put into student services or making sure everyone does well &c &c

mostly tho i was sorta echoing dan's surprise at how low the 6 year graduation rate in general is because that was outside my undergrad xp

yeah, totally, ime the level of institutional support at those places is p fantasticyeah -- please compare expensive 4-year private schools with qualified therapists available as but one of many varied student services with community colleges that have no therapists and are not anything summer camp like at all. now compare their graduation rates. investment in student support services is directly related to graduation rates/"student success".

mostly tho i was sorta echoing dan's surprise at how low the 6 year graduation rate in general is because that was outside my undergrad xp

I mean, I didn't expect to see graduation rates across the board to equal the Ivies, but I didn't expect to see 66% quoted as a high rate, either; I would have guessed a national average somewhere in the low 80s.

TBH my perception is very, very skewed because the vast majority of reasons why ppl would leave school were covered by undergrad services; multiple ppl had kids and still graduated in 6 years, had drug dependency issues and still graduated in 6 years, went crazy to the point of involuntary committal and still finished in 6 years, etc.

If those same grads are highly willing to be geographically mobile, highly willing to consider actuarial training, and highly willing to take tougher courses and study where the jobs are (doesn’t have to be tech subjects, some of those are failing too), the unemployment response to a given AD shock will be much lower.

anyway i think this is both wrong and misleading. on the whole as someone pointed out upthread its fine to say on individual level 'oh you shouldve been an actuary not a puppeteer' or w/e but there are hardly enough actuarial (or electrical engineering or software dev) jobs to give to everyone. also theres both an information and a time lag in education and its hard to fault anyone for not being prescient enough to know that IT jobs would be oversubscribed and actuaries would not or w/e.

realistically (and as well) most (white collar) jobs are only well-paying because they havent been outsourced/mechanized efficiently yet or because some credentialing body artificially restricts the supply neither of which bodes well for the prospects of young ppl in high school. the reason cowen's argument is particularly bad is because it obscures the real problem, which is that college is a bad investment for most ppl and is probably becoming increasingly worse one

TBH my perception is very, very skewed because the vast majority of reasons why ppl would leave school were covered by undergrad services; multiple ppl had kids and still graduated in 6 years, had drug dependency issues and still graduated in 6 years, went crazy to the point of involuntary committal and still finished in 6 years, etc.

Every school I've been to (4 state colleges and one community college) has had grad rates from 7 percent (at the community college) to the low 30s percents at the highest.

My friend works at one of the state colleges with a special retention program that he spearheaded – he grew up in Compton and he tries to get kids from there to go to this college and then stay in. He's got a really small support network at the college and threats of funding cuts all the time. It's totally crushing him because he's got so many out-of-school factors he's competing with. I was obv not in his program but he was and is a mentor to me and he's one of the biggest reasons I graduated college at all (I mean look at my track record there). He's the one who convinced me I could go to grad school and guided me through that whole process. I think my point is he's an anomaly at the kind of schools I've been to and it was just awesome luck that he's part of my life. The cost for him to choose to help people like that is more taxing than I could handle.

anyway i think this is both wrong and misleading. on the whole as someone pointed out upthread its fine to say on individual level 'oh you shouldve been an actuary not a puppeteer' or w/e but there are hardly enough actuarial (or electrical engineering or software dev) jobs to give to everyone. also theres both an information and a time lag in education and its hard to fault anyone for not being prescient enough to know that IT jobs would be oversubscribed and actuaries would not or w/e.

realistically (and as well) most (white collar) jobs are only well-paying because they havent been outsourced/mechanized efficiently yet or because some credentialing body artificially restricts the supply neither of which bodes well for the prospects of young ppl in high school. the reason cowen's argument is particularly bad is because it obscures the real problem, which is that college is a bad investment for most ppl and is probably becoming increasingly worse one

― so solaris (Lamp)

I already sorta said this but I think what bothers me most is the inability for someone like cowen to contextualize this. he is *in the belly of this beast*, his current paycheck depends on people believing that a non-technical degree from a so-so american public college is a *good investment*. his future paychecks depend on that demand!

dude is the most annoying person on my google reader feed but he's still worth reading I guess.

Studying puppetry and then not getting a job sounds sort of like boomer-parent life expectations colliding with our generation's reality. But yeah it's kind of a strawman too inasmuch as it's not very representative.

For reference, the 4 and 6-year graduation rates are the %age of first-time college students entering the school as freshmen who graduate from that school after 4 or 6 years. So yes students who transfer to other institutions and ultimately graduate count against reported graduation rates. As do dropouts and lingerers.

yeah I have a friend who is applying to law schools for the third year in a row, despite becoming increasingly aware that (a) he will hate it (b) he will be just as unemployed after he graduates as he is now